Donald Ewen Cameron

Donald Ewen Cameron – known as D. Ewen Cameron or Ewen Cameron – was a Scottish-born psychiatrist who served as President of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966). In spite of his high professional reputation, he has been criticized for, among other things, administering electroconvulsive therapy and experimental drugs, including poisons such as curare, to patients and prisoners without their informed consent, and his role in the history of the development of psychological and medical torture techniques. Some of this work took place in the context of the Project MKUltra program for the developing of mind control and torture techniques, psychoactive poisons, and behavior modification systems. Decades after his own death, the psychic driving technique he developed continued to see extensive use in the torture of prisoners around the world.